1)The Marion Anderson Courtyard at UCLA Anderson is the perfect place to break for lunch and power down — and power up, as it happens. In 2015, Jason Hsu (Ph.D. ’04), assistant adjunct professor of finance and an Anderson alumnus, generously donated a ZON Powersol umbrella that provides shade as well as three weather-proofed solar-powered USB ports to charge up to three mobile devices at a time as quickly as a wall outlet, day or night. UCLA Anderson immediately purchased three more with help from donations to the Anderson Fund from students and alumni, and has added more since. UCLA was the first UC campus to use the ZON umbrellas. It’s just one of the ways Anderson is thinking in the Next.

07/18/2018

UCLA Anderson Professor Magali Delmas asserts the most important component to slowing climate change is information. “In 20 years we will all have a lot of information about everything we consume,” she says. “We’ll know the impact of the meat we eat … we’ll know the impact of our electricity usage in real time. Once we have this information, what will we do with it? We can’t change our behavior if we don’t know our impact.”

Delmas, who holds a joint appointment at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and is also director of the UCLA Center for Corporate Environmental Performance and president of the Alliance for Research in Corporate Sustainability, has studied — and encouraged — conservationist consumer behavior for the last 20 years. She recently spoke to a public audience about her research trajectory and her new book The Green Bundle: Pairing the Market with the Planet (co-authored with David Colgan). Host Zocalo Public Square framed the question as “Does environmentalism need to make peace with capitalism?” and put veteran broadcast journalist Warren Olney in the moderator’s seat to hear Delmas’ answer. But the more-to-the-point question the book poses is whether capitalism can, for its own good, make peace with environmentalism.

07/17/2018

A quintet of UCLA Anderson students was commissioned by Conservation International Guyana to assess the feasibility of blockchain technology to solve a major challenge in the implementation and scaling of the Community Development Plan (CDP) in Guyana. The work was conducted in the group’s Applied Management Research (AMR) project, the field study assignment that serves as the capstone of Anderson’s full-time MBA experience. The team, comprising Class of 2018’s Miriam Leah Feygenson, Yuhei Iwasaki, Vasiya Krishnan, Anubhav Mishra and Harshita Mishra, was awarded the inaugural Impact Alumni AMR Award and received a $5,000 prize.

The Impact Alumni AMR Award recognizes the MBA student team that has excelled at making the greatest impact on their mission-driven client’s project through the course of the AMR program.

“This award was established to highlight and appreciate the specialized skills and abilities needed to work with a mission-driven organization’s unique need to balance financial and social impact returns,” says Bhavna Sivanand (’14), executive director of the school’s Impact@Anderson initiative. “An important objective for Impact@Anderson is to integrate impact into the core competency of the MBA program, so that all MBA graduates seek out opportunities such as social impact AMRs to be able to positively contribute to society during their time here and beyond.”

06/09/2018

I’m always amazed by how many pathways can lead into social impact careers. As a first-year MBA student specializing in social impact, I find it heartening that: a) people from so many industries have found ways to fold impact into their disparate interests; and b) I don’t have to follow a single, rigid plan to attain a career in the impact space.

Hugh Chang (’90) is a great example of someone who didn’t initially plan to pursue a career underpinned by social impact but found his way there somewhat serendipitously (and is thriving ― most recently as director of strategy planning and management for global development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). Chang started his career in technology after obtaining an undergraduate degree in electrical and electronics engineering. His time in tech was nothing if not exciting: Chang worked at Microsoft when it was an organization of fewer than 5,000 people and experiencing massive growth. In fact, the whole country was undergoing momentous technological change at the time. “I got to help [Microsoft] make personal computers pervasive in people’s everyday lives,” he told a crowd at a recent UCLA Anderson School of Management High Impact Tea event organized by Impact@Anderson.

Impact Week attracted members of the greater UCLA and Los Angeles communities to engage with Anderson students, alumni, faculty and staff in interactive panels and workshops tackling topics that included impact investing, affordable housing, blockchain technology and finding purpose in traditional workplaces.

The week kicked off with a keynote address by Cara Chacon, VP of social and environmental responsibility at outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia. The privately held company is on its way to a 100 percent climate-neutral goal by nurturing a squeaky-clean supply chain that accounts for everything from healthy soil for regenerative organic agriculture to fair wages for a healthy community (and therapeutic surfing breaks for Ventura-based staff). “A responsible business model works,” said Chacon. The proof? Patagonia recently reached $1 billion in revenue.

04/24/2018

Ryan Dumlao, Melody Akbari and Varun Chalupadi at the Lynk booth at Mum’s Village, a convention in Nairobi

UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

Jambo! We would love to take you on a journey with us to Nairobi, Kenya, to tell you more about our team’s field study experience.

At the end of our first year at UCLA Anderson, we were matched with the Kenyan startup Lynk, a technology platform that connects customers with trusted domestic workers, called fundis, and skilled blue collar professionals. Around 80 percent of Kenya’s labor force comprises informal workers or contractors. Lynk was built in order to create a smarter way for households and businesses to get service throughout Nairobi. Lynk’s goal is to transform the informal worker industry by employing as many fundis as possible ― to date helping to direct $600,000 to workers.

Lynk, founded in 2015 by former Google product manager Adam Grunewald, currently has three product offerings: Requests, Projects and Discover. Our AMR project focused on Lynk Requests, a full-service solution whereby customers specify a job and Lynk matches them with a qualified worker. Lynk Requests has 1,300 vetted workers on the platform, with more than 6,000 jobs completed over 70 service categories that include plumbing, roofing, housekeeping, cooking, childcare and more.

04/09/2018

DuringImpact Week(April 9–13, 2018), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, UCLA Anderson is highlighting stories of mission-driven careers, companies and projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from entertainment to real estate. On April 16, Anderson presents the annual Energy Innovation Conference, which focuses on companies striving for energy resiliency through new technologies, robust policy and inventive business models.

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

UCLA Anderson Inspirational 100 alumnus Gil Penalosa (’84) believes in government’s ability and authority to build and maintain urban infrastructures that can enhance a city’s livability. But he also believes that, in most cities, the efforts and policies are mismanaged. Take public transportation and traffic congestion mitigation. “No private-sector company is going to solve the mobility problem,” Penalosa says. “Not one city in the world solves the problem through the private sector — public transit has to be run by governments. But the public sector should do more steering and less rowing. You can outsource the rowing.”

Founder and chair of the board of the Toronto-based nonprofit 8 80 Cities and chair of the board of World Urban Parks, Penalosa works internationally as a consultant and strategic advisor to both public and private institutions looking to create vibrant urban systems. Penalosa has one catch phrase he considers the real key to making cities livable: healthy mobility. When people can safely navigate their communities on foot, bicycle or wheelchair, he says, a chain reaction of mental and physical health benefits follows. This raises the quality of life for every citizen, including the most vulnerable — the very young, the very old and the very poor.

04/06/2018

DuringImpact Week(April 9–13, 2018), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, UCLA Anderson is highlighting stories of mission-driven careers, companies and projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from entertainment to real estate. On April 16, Anderson presents the annual Energy Innovation Conference, which focuses on companies striving for energy resiliency through new technologies, robust policy and inventive business models.

By Elizabeth Heredia (’19)

Bright-eyed and optimistic, college degree in hand, I was called by “the toughest job I’d ever love”: an environmental conservation assignment with the Peace Corps in a rural village in the mountains of Panama.

When I first arrived in Ojo de Agua, my job was to do nothing but pasear, which is to “walk around unhurried, stopping and chatting with townspeople.” I would often strike up a conversation right on neighbors’ porches, or perhaps at a grocery kiosk or even in the middle of the street. Niceties were exchanged, and town gossip, too.

In time, my community began to trust me and our conversations evolved. They began to share their stories and opinions. The porch visits were my favorite. As we swung back and forth on hammocks, I listened and absorbed, asked question after question, and slowly began to understand locals’ values as well as their aspirations.

04/05/2018

Impact@Anderson and the UCLA Anderson Net Impact chapter present Anderson’s annual Impact Week, April 9–13, 2018. Under the theme Purpose + Profit, invited thought leaders and founders of mission-driven companies explain how they are shaping the future of business through the creation of a social, environmental and economic evolution. They share their insights in workshops, panels and a networking mixer open to the campus community and the wider public.

Jessica Lin (’18) and Karthik Patange (’18), both VPs of Impact Week and UCLA Anderson’s Net Impact chapter, which won NI Graduate Chapter of the Year in 2017, are spearheading Impact Week. As purpose-driven MBA candidates, they hope their peers will be inspired to build service and the greater good into their plans for profitable careers.

Q: As Impact Week comes together, where do you anticipate MBA students and alumni will find particular value?

Karthik Patange: The technology theme will be prominent during Impact Week. We live in a world where tech governs everything, including our future careers. However, it’s hard for some to envision how tech and social purpose come together unless it’s through the traditional CSR “add-on.” This year, Impact Week delves into blockchain, social media and education through computer science. We hope to show MBA students that they can make an impact within their tech roles, and not as a peripheral initiative of their companies.

Jessica Lin: We wanted to highlight a variety of industries in which profitable companies also have meaningful impact. I expect that representatives from the big name companies, such as Patagonia, Google and BuzzFeed, will help expand people’s knowledge of and interest in having impactful careers.

KP: Definitely. I hope students understand that big companies with big business practices can also cater to big purposes, and that this mindset can shape their individual careers.

Q: What is the role of social media in realizing the “purpose + profit” goal?

KP: Social media directly influences social impact. Online social networks are outlets for individuals to be outspoken about their purposeful initiatives and generate awareness. How is the business side supporting this interest, especially in today’s always-online climate? From simple knowledge sharing to how to use data for social good to spreading the word on the human condition in other parts of the world, social media networks can support purpose in a sustainable and profitable way.

UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

In January 2018, our Applied Management Research (AMR) team visited Alta Verapaz in the northern highlands of Guatemala with our client Strategies for International Development (SID). SID is a nonprofit organization that develops and promotes methods for helping poor farmers reclaim eroded land, increase income and overcome poverty.

Having successfully launched campaigns in Bolivia and Honduras, SID focuses currently on helping coffee farmers in Guatemala. SID engaged our team to help answer some of the nonprofit’s toughest strategic and marketing questions in order to ultimately drive its fundraising efforts. We traveled with key members of the SID team, including executive director Charles Patterson and Guatemala National Program director Bayron Leon to apply and improve SID’s new strategy on the ground.